It is well known to supply donor mediums and receiver mediums used in printers in the form continuous webs that are wound onto a core until used. This method of web medium storage is highly efficient allowing a large amount of web medium to be supplied to a printer in a form that is inexpensive, easy to manufacture, and readily accessible for use during printing. Accordingly, printers are often designed with medium supplies that use core wound webs of medium.
The process of loading a core and associated web into a printer can be complicated because, in some instances, the proper orientation of a core within a pair of mountings that hold the core for rotation in a printer may not be apparent. Mis-assembly of the core to the mountings can interrupt or undermine the printing process for example, by causing images to be printed on the wrong side of a receiver medium.
In some printers, the mountings are fixed to the printer and in other printers separable mountings known as gudgeons are used. The gudgeons allow a core to be assembled to mountings outside of the printer. The combined gudgeons and core are then loaded into the printer as an assembly. When gudgeons are used it becomes possible for an inexperienced user of the printer to mis-assemble the core and the gudgeons. This can be done, for example, by assembling a gudgeon to a wrong end of the core or by assembling the core to gudgeons that are not intended for use with the core.
What is needed therefore is printer web supply that reduces the risk that a core and associated web will be misloaded or mis-assembled and that does so without making loading more difficult and without making the core more expensive.
It is also well known that each web medium used by a printer has characteristics that can influence the appearance of a print made using the web medium. Examples of such characteristics include surface gloss, thickness, age of the medium, the batch of the medium, grain direction, dye composition, manufacturer identification, density information, and color information. Accordingly, data can be associated with a core and web medium to help identify these characteristics to the printer. This data can be used to adjust the printing process or to obtain data that can be used to adjust the printing process based upon the characteristics of the web medium. It is particularly useful therefore for such data to be provided to the printer at a time of loading. Manual entry of such data can be performed however this approach is time consuming and fraught with the potential for user error.
Various techniques are known to determine data that is related to a web medium on a core. For example, it is known to read markings recorded on the core or to sense Radio Frequency identification tags that are associated with a core, or a core adapter. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,385,416 to Maekawa et al., issued Jan. 31, 1995, entitled “Device for Identifying an Ink Ribbon Cartridge Used in a Printer”, U.S. Pat. No. 7,063,470, entitled “Printer Media Supply Spool Adapted to Allow the Printer to Sense the Type of Media and Method for Assembling Same” issued to Spurr et al. on Jun. 30, 2006.
Another effort to meet this need is shown in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2008/0180477, published on Jul. 31, 2008, filed by Trombley et al., in which a media assembly and printer media supply are provided that enable automatic determination of a predetermined parameter value of a strip of media material. The media assembly includes a cylindrical core upon which a strip of the media material is spirally wound. The core has an end into which at least one notch is recessed such that the notch has a physical characteristic indicative of the predetermined parameter value of the wound strip. The assembly further includes a flange on the core end. The flange is adapted to detect the physical characteristic of the notch and to adapt a tactile feature that represents the parameter value of the wound strip. The printer media supply allows automatic detection of the feature and determination of the predetermined parameter value based upon the detected feature. In Trombley, the notch features are formed at ends of the core.
Accordingly, while the prior art approaches can provide commercially viable systems that can be provided with a core and that can be useful for data exchange in many circumstances require cores that are marked, tagged or specially modified which can add cost or complexity to the core design and require the printer to use complex mountings and/or readers, and that can further increase the complexity of a loading process.
What is therefore needed in the art is a printer having a medium supply that can automatically sense conditions at the core that are indicative of data regarding the web while still maintaining a low cost core fabrication process and without requiring complex reading systems.
These and other needs may be met by various embodiments described and claimed herein.